11/13/2008 @ 12:00AM

Free Fathi Eljahmi

How about starting with Libya’s most famous democratic dissident, Fathi Eljahmi?

Though Eljahmi is not American, his fate is entwined with America’s promise to stand up for champions of freedom the world over. This month the 67-year-old Eljahmi is entering his seventh year of near-solitary confinement in the prisons and detention pens of Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

Today, Eljahmi is ill, held at a state medical facility in Tripoli, under guard around the clock. He is allowed only occasional and tightly supervised visitors, who report back that in his small room the window is sealed and barred, cockroaches infest his bed and food, and he is cut off from news, phones or any other routine contact with the outside world. His voice has not been heard in public since early 2004.

As a symbol of democratic dissent in the Muslim world, Eljahmi provides a living shorthand for many largely unsung heroes of liberty, bullied or consigned to dungeons by such Middle Eastern tyrants as Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. But Eljahmi’s case is especially urgent and significant as an early test of the foreign-policy priorities of the new Obama administration.

Why? Among those taking a strong interest these past few years in Eljahmi’s fate, one of the most staunch and vocal has been Senator, and now Vice-President-elect, Joe Biden–who was presented by Obama during the campaign as a mentor on foreign policy. The tale of Biden’s involvement with Eljahmi dates back to at least December 2003, when Gadhafi struck a deal with the Bush administration to surrender his clandestine nuclear weapons program in exchange for Libya’s rehabilitation from a sanctioned, terror-designated state to a full member of the international community.

With hopes then high that this rapprochement would bring democratic reform inside Libya, a parade of western politicians began dropping in on Tripoli. Among the first to arrive, in early March 2004, was Biden. He asked Gadhafi to free Fathi Eljahmi, who at the time was locked up as a prisoner of conscience inside Libya’s notorious Abu Salim prison. Gadhafi complied. Eljahmi, upon release, gave a series of public interviews, explaining the advantages to Libya of pursuing democratic reforms.

No such reforms took place. Instead, within the month, Gadhafi’s security forces assaulted Eljahmi, trashed his home in Tripoli and locked him up again. Since then, Biden has called repeatedly for Eljahmi’s release. In a speech this past July, on the Senate floor, Biden described Eljahmi as “a courageous Libyan democracy advocate whose only crime was to speak truth to power.”

Biden called on the Bush administration to do more to obtain Eljahmi’s freedom, and declared that “the future of the Libyan-American relationship, at least as far as this senator is concerned, will be affected by the Libyan government’s treatment of Mr. Eljahmi.”

With Obama and Biden heading for the American bully pulpit, the test now is whether Biden’s staunch stand on Eljahmi was aimed more at berating the Bush administration, or defending the jailed Libyan dissident.

For U.S. policy on Libya, a shift is clearly in order. Since the 2003 nuclear disarmament deal, the Bush administration has downplayed Libyan repression and held up Gadhafi’s return from the cold as a model of diplomatic success. Gadhafi has been rewarded not only by removal from the terror list and the lifting of sanctions, but with a seat on the U.N. Security Council, rich access to business deals and a visit this past September from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

But all this diplomacy and business drove home the unfortunate lesson that the White House was willing to wink at the jailing of a Fathi Eljahmi. And, just as these methods failed to inspire cooperation from the likes of nuclear extortionist North Korea or terrorist-supporting nuclear wannabe Iran, the diplomatic gains in Libya now seem to be unraveling as well.

Earlier this month, Gadhafi made a swing through Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Despite Libya’s oil wealth, Libyan news sources reported that on this trip Gadhafi’s shopping list included not only arms, but also Russian cooperation on building nuclear reactors and supplying nuclear fuel.

In a world in which America’s best long-term hope of security is still the spread of democracy, it would send an important signal were Obama and Biden to move right now to keep Eljahmi high on the radar. One starting point might be to invite Fathi Eljahmi to the inauguration. If he can’t come, hold an empty place for him, and point it out, as a sign of what kind of world change America still has in mind.